Metro 157

Richard Herring: Members of the jury, please be upstanding for the judge

Friday 27 Mar 2015

The story about the judges sacked for watching porn on their work computers amused me. There must have been an awful lot of nervous judges turning up at work early the next day to hastily delete their internet history.

But if we’re going to start sacking people for looking at porn on a work computer, it’s certainly time for me to hand in my resignation from the Metro. I am actually watching pornography now. I sure love working on my column.

I mean, if the judges were watching porn during the cases they were presiding over and furiously banging their gavels, I can see why that would be an issue. But if you want to empty your private chamber in your private chambers while wearing a weird wig, that’s up to you. If shaking hands with the unemployed can make you unemployed, where will it end?

Would anyone be left at work if everyone who watched porn on a work computer was sacked? I think they should offer a raise (no pun intended) to anyone who can prove they have never watched grumble flicks in the office.

I am not sure many would be in the queue and I bet even the ones who claimed they were porn-free would have some forgotten dodgy images on their hard drive.

There’s something vaguely Orwellian about this. Will they start firing people for naughty thoughts next? Will a 21st-century Twitch-Finder General start rooting out anyone suspected of having a one-night stand with themselves? First they came for the naughty judges, I did not speak out because I am not a judge…

I don’t like the idea of sexually frustrated judges passing down harsh sentences because they aren’t properly relaxed. Then again, maybe sentences would be too lenient if given during post-release euphoria.

And what if the judge is experiencing post-release self-loathing and disgust? Someone should have to monitor the judges to make sure they couldn’t try a case within 15 minutes of ‘releasing the innocents’.

I say, ‘Judge not the porny judge, lest ye be judged by a porny judge.’ Which you almost certainly will be.

I tweeted about my amusement and outrage about this story and was contacted by Channel 4 News who asked me to come on the show to discuss it. It would have been fun to ask Jon Snow if he was prepared to share his internet history with the viewers, but I was ‘busy’. It’s nice that they see me as the go-to expert on poker-stroking. My mum must be very proud. I would say I am merely an enthusiastic amateur.

Last week I railed against the unnecessary
evil of liquid soap, but there is a more heinous example of an over-designed
item which was fine as it was: the razor. In the old days men shaved with a
single razor blade and their faces were smooth. Then advertisers convinced men
that two blades were better, then three. Every comedian in the world joked
about this razor-based arms race and imagined ridiculous five-bladed razors.
But the satire was lost on the designers who turned comedy to reality. The
greedy razor blade manufacturers make us pay for five times more blades than we
need, then have the audacity to claim that the first blade shaves close, the
second closer, the third closer still…. You only need the final blade, the
one that shaves the closest!

But now they’ve found a new way to
“improve” the razor. Someone has noticed that sometimes men have to move their
face to get an optimum shave, which doesn’t seem like that much of an
inconvenience to me. But to save us having to do that they’ve made a razor with
a roller-ball in it.

Who wants to waste valuable energy
in engaging face muscles? You can now save micro-seconds! If you’re
too lazy to move your mouth when you’re shaving then maybe you should just grow
a beard.